


dream paths

by chasinglaughter



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-01-05
Updated: 2018-04-06
Packaged: 2018-05-11 22:16:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 3,719
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5643832
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chasinglaughter/pseuds/chasinglaughter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jon x Sansa drabbles.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. awkward

**Author's Note:**

> thought I'd move some of the prompts I've gotten on Tumblr over here. Hope you enjoy!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: “Of all the people I could’ve gotten stuck in an elevator with and it just had to be you.”

She has no make-up on, she can’t find her key card in the chaos that is currently her handbag, she’s forty minutes late to work (and counting) because of the absolute nightmare that is downtown traffic during morning rush hour—Sansa can’t remember the last time she’s started a day so badly.

Okay, that isn’t entirely true—she started the day well enough, actually, waking up to the smell of fresh coffee in a soft warm bed. It was perfectly lovely, until she caught sight of the unfamiliar navy blue walls and the clothing flung all about the room and registered the unmistakable sound of someone taking a shower in the next room, the realization of exactly whose bed she was in slamming her awake. The resulting scramble to gather up her things and leave unnoticed was not the proudest moment of her life.

She shouldn’t have just snuck out like that, she knows, but she doesn’t think she could have faced the absolute awkwardness of facing him either. They’d both been lonely and a little bit more than tipsy, running into each other at the bar last night—her after seeing Joff and Marg together, him still bitter over his last break-up—and Sansa won’t fool herself into thinking that it’s anything more than that, no matter how wonderful the evening was. She’ll call him later to clear things up, after she’s finished up with all the small tasks and errands that seem to pile up over the weekend.

 _If she ever even makes it to the office_. She still can’t find the elevator key card in the mess of things she tossed into her bag in her mad dash earlier. Sansa’s ten seconds away from dumping the contents of her bag on the floor just to find the damn thing, when a hand snakes past her to insert his own card into the slot. The doors ding open.

“ _Thank_ you,” she says, turning to beam at her savior, before stopping dead.  For someone who barely got any sleep, Jon Snow looks amazingly well-rested (although _he_ got a proper shower at least, she thinks with some resentment).

“No problem,” he says, gestures for her to go in ahead. “What floor?”

“Twenty-ninth,” she says, and he slides in his key card again, tapping the buttons for 29 and 31.

The doors slide close. Sansa resists the urge to flee to the opposite end of the elevator car. She can _feel_ his presence beside her, his fingers beating a tattoo onto his jeans, his eyes resolutely fixed to the slowly climbing numbers of the display.

It would be easier to stay silent, to get off at her floor and pretend they never ran into each other an hour and a half after she snuck out of his apartment after a one-night stand. But Robb’s birthday is coming up, which means the usual weekend ski trip where they’ll have no choice but to interact normally, so Sansa decides that they need to establish the rules of their relationship post-hookup (i.e., act as if they were still more-than-acquaintances but not-quite-friends).

“Busy day today?”

He shrugs, eyes still glued to the display. “Couple of meetings. Sam’s doing most of the work, really.”

She soldiers on. They only have to make awkward small talk for ten more floors. “How is Sam?”

“He and Gilly just got engaged.”

“That’s lovely—"

The elevator shudders to a halt. Sansa stumbles, and Jon grabs her waist to steady her, swearing under his breath. She steps forward, away from his hand, to jab at the alarm button on the control panel.

He sits on the floor, leaning against the wall with his legs stretched out. “I’d make myself comfortable if I were you. Last week I was stuck in here for an hour.”

She stares at him in horror before sinking to the floor on the opposite side of the car. “Shit.“


	2. fight

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: "Teach me to fight."

“ _Jon_.”

Jon shakes his head, tries to ignore the wide-eyed puppy-dog stare Sansa perfected at three years old and is currently sending his way. He’s not entirely successful. “Why can’t you ask Arya? She’s been doing krav maga for years.“

She rolls her eyes. “I love my sister, but she’s not exactly the most patient teacher.”

“Sansa—“

“You don’t think I can handle it?”

“It’s not that,” he says, and it’s true—for all that people tend to write her off as the dainty Stark daughter, she’s got as much steel in her as the rest of them (not to mention a temper to match Rickon’s). “But you could get hurt—”

Sansa turns on him, eyes flashing. “I’m not made of glass. Just because I bruise easily—"

He remembers the lines of purple crisscrossing the pale skin of her arms, her sobbing in his arms while Robb swore furiously into the phone, Joffrey Baratheon’s smug stupid face at the police station—he doesn’t know if he could stand seeing the same marks on Sansa again, if they were inflicted by him, even by accident.

“Please, Jon?’ She puts a hand on his arm. He stares at the bright pink of her long nails. “I don’t want to be useless anymore. After Baelish—"

Sansa breaks off, looking away, and he has to fight down the sudden surge of rage that rises in his gut at the mention of the Stark’s former family friend. “You’re not useless,” he tells her, pushing her chin gently to face him. “I’d say you handled that perv just as well as Arya would have. And with a lot less blood.”

She laughs, tilts her head up to look him straight in the eye. “And if I wanted more blood?”

“You’re even more terrifying than Arya sometimes,” he huffs, running a hand through his hair. “Alright, fine. Meet me outside in ten.“


	3. grudge

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: “I bet I can make you scream my name.”

You wouldn’t think it looking at her, but Sansa Stark can really hold a grudge.

Having known her for years, Jon’s always been well-acquainted with this fact, but dating Sansa has him quickly relearning the extent to which she will hold something against you.

“You’re not _still_ mad?” He asks, incredulous, looking up at where she’s leaning back against the pillows. Arms crossed, tight-lipped, one brow arched perfectly at him, she would be as still and forbidding as a statue if it weren’t for the flush creeping up her neck and the slight shudder of her thigh against his cheek.

Sansa says nothing, only turns her head to the side. She’d learned fairly early on that the silent treatment was particularly effective with him whenever she wanted to prove a point, to his dismay—there’s nothing in the world like listening to the sounds Sansa makes when she falls apart in his arms, and she’s ridiculously good at withholding that pleasure from him when she wants to.

Of course, he thinks, rolling his eyes and ducking his head once again, it only makes him all the more determined to get her to scream.


	4. breakfast

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: "We both reached for the last box of fruit loops and I don’t care that we’re both adults I will fight you."

Her mother’s drilled impeccable manners and proper etiquette into her since she was old enough to talk, but it’s a little too much to ask, Sansa thinks, to be polite to someone who’s blocking her way in the breakfast line at seven in the damn morning.

She tries, anyway. “Excuse me,” she says, pushing slightly forward and hoping he’ll get the hint to move aside so she can get at the cereal. He’s been fiddling with his plate in front of the buffet table—probably arranging the food so it won’t slide off, she thinks, glancing at the completely overloaded plate—and that’s all well and good, but he’s positioned right in front of the mini cereal boxes and his broad frame (her eyes have flicked appreciatively over the expanse of his shoulders more than once, even as she bristled behind him in impatience) is keeping her from grabbing the last box of Fruit Loops.

“Oh, sorry,” he says, flushing and stepping to the side. “I’m done, just let me grab this—“

His hand shoots out to grab the Fruit Loops just as hers does. They stare at each other, each clutching one side of the box.

He seems to be waiting for something. Sansa arches a brow at him.

He clears his throat. “Well, you know,” he says, “I _was_ here first.”

“You were taking forever.”

“I was just about to get it.”

“You can’t seriously eat it on top of all _that_.” She nods towards the pile of bacon and eggs and sausages and god knows what else piled onto his plate.

“You’d be surprised.”

“Can’t you just pick another cereal?”

“ _No_ ,” he says, shaking his head, and she would approve of his dedication to the perfect breakfast cereal if it wasn’t thwarting her own. “These are _Fruit Loops_.”

“I’m aware,” Sansa says, tugging at the box slightly. “That’s why I want them.”

He pulls the box right back towards him. “Are you seriously going to fight me for it?”

“I will if I have to,” she threatens, allowing a smirk to creep onto her face and tugging on the box harder. “They _are_ Fruit Loops.”

Ten minutes later they’re in front of the quiet little hotel, the door slamming behind their backs. They stare at each other for a second before bursting into laughter.

“Guess we lost the right to free breakfast for the rest of our stay,” he laughs.

“Shame,” she sighs, mock-dramatically.

“I will miss those overcooked eggs.”

“And the watery coffee.”

He smiles at her, reaches out to brush off the pieces of cereal that have lodged themselves into her hair. “Tell you what—there’s a decent cafe two blocks from here. My treat.”


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sansa and Jon return home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written on the spur of the moment for a forgotten assignment for a lit class, apologies for the choppiness!

Winterfell is not quite the crumbling ruin she was led to believe it had become, but she barely recognizes it now, looming over them with a quiet stillness so different from the bustling castle she remembers.

Jon stands beside her, grey eyes flicking around the courtyard. Snowflakes melt in his dark curls, and she is so painfully reminded of Robb, standing in the same courtyard what feels like centuries ago when she left for the capital.

“We are the last, Jon,” she whispers. “The last of the Starks.”

She knows he is a Targaryen now, legitimized by Queen Daenerys and made her heir. But she cannot think of him as anything but a Stark, this boy of her childhood, grown into a man living through horrors even she cannot imagine. Living as Alayne, she’d thought it would be so sweet to see him again, but the thought was nothing to the actual sight of him in the Eyrie, marching south with his aunt and her dragons from the Battle Beyond the Wall - he had looked so much like Ned Stark then, so much like home and family, that she had to sit down. And t __hese months spent travelling to Winterfell together, she’s learned that he’s inherited so much more from his pseudo-father than his appearance, that he is as brave and gentle and kind as Ned was.

He turns those familiar soft grey eyes to her now, brushing his lips across her forehead. His hand rests on the not quite noticeable swell of her belly.

“Not for much longer."


	6. fools

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Written for Day 1 of the Jonsa Spring Challenge on Tumblr.
> 
> Prompt: fools
> 
> ”But she's just shy and modest. If he cannot perceive her regard, he is a fool."  
> "We are all fools in love.”  
> \- Pride and Prejudice (2005)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> original Tumblr post [here](https://thesleepysubwaytrain.tumblr.com/post/172473046611/jonsa-spring-challenge-day-1-ao3-thanks).

Here’s the thing: Arya _knows_ that Sansa isn’t shallow and stupid, like some people think she is based on her physical appearance (although _okay_ , yes, there was admittedly a brief period in her moody adolescence when she was one of them). But there are times when she’s so fucking obtuse that it makes Arya cheerfully contemplate banging her head against the wall.

Case in point: her beautiful, clever, usually strong independent sister is having a mini freakout in a back room during their parents’ annual Winter Gala, all because Jon Snow didn’t give her a _proper compliment_.

“He just said I looked nice,” Sansa complains, for the third time since she dragged Arya in here, blue eyes even brighter than usual after five glasses of champagne. “I look damn better than _nice_.”

She definitely does, Arya has to admit. Sansa is always pretty, but tonight, in a long shimmery gown with a dangerously high slit, she’s a total knockout. Most men—and quite a few women—have been following her with their eyes all night. Jon included.

“Yes, you do, and _trust_ me, Jon noticed,” Arya says, proud of herself for keeping her tone even despite her growing impatience.

“Then why didn’t he say _anything_ ,” Sansa pouts.

“Because he was too busy trying to pull his tongue back in his mouth.”

“Shut up, he was _not_.”

“Um, yes, he was. Like he always is, you idiot.”

“He doesn’t like me that way.”

“How do you know?”

“He didn’t look at my dress, not even—“ Sansa gestures towards her neckline.

Arya snorts. “Oh my god, are you seriously complaining that Jon’s too much of a gentleman to try to look down your dress?”

“I wouldn’t mind, if it was him,” Sansa says dreamily.

“Okaaaay, and that’s my cue to leave.” Arya rolls her eyes and reaches for the door handle.

“Nooooo,” Sansa’s hand shoots out, surprisingly quick despite her tipsiness, to grab her wrist. “Don’t leave me.”

“I’m not missing my one chance to get Gendry to dance just to listen to you whine about something that can be fixed in about five seconds if you just corner Jon under the mistletoe.”

“If I did that, he’d just be mortified and do something completely brotherly like kiss me on the _cheek.”_

“Again,” Arya says, pulling free and wrenching the door open, “you’re an idiot. Come find me when you decide to stop living in denial.”

She exits the back room, rolling her eyes, to find Jon pacing in the hallway. He looks as tipsy as Sansa; tie askew, curls falling out of his stupid hipster man bun—and no wonder, she thinks, watching him tug his hand through his hair.

“Is Sansa in there?” he demands.

“Ye—”

He groans. “I fucked up, didn’t I, she _hates_ me, she hasn’t looked at me all night, I’ll never have a shot with her now—”

“Oh my god,” Arya says, and grabs his coat and shoves him through the doorway, ignoring his grunt of surprise and Sansa’s mini shriek. _Idiots_.

*

Arya tries very hard not to look smug when Sansa creeps into their room at six the next morning, clad only in Jon’s dress shirt.


	7. bed

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Written for Day 2 of the Jonsa Spring Challenge on Tumblr.
> 
> Dialogue prompt: "And how do you propose we do it then?" // "Well, you thought wrong."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is the tropiest of tropey. i apologize.
> 
> original Tumblr post [here](https://thesleepysubwaytrain.tumblr.com/post/172525537341/jonsa-creatives-jonsa-spring-challenge-day-2).

Sansa stares at the bed and wills it to split into two, or at the very least grow a little bit bigger.

Behind her, she hears Jon lugging her suitcase through the doorway. “Did you bring your entire closet? We’re only going to be at Winterfell for two weeks, San—”

He stops short.

“Oh.”

It’s not exactly eloquent, but then again Jon Snow rarely is, except for when he’s stupidly drunk. Sansa knows this from first-hand experience—the exact experience, in fact, that has her completely mortified just being in the same room as him, never mind the same bed.

As it turns out, when Jon Snow is stupidly drunk, he’s also stupidly sweet, and Sansa’s always been a sucker for sweet things.

If only he didn’t run out of her dorm with nothing but a mumbled apology just when things were getting interesting, and avoided her like the plague for weeks after, this entire situation could have been a planned romantic detour instead of an emergency stop because neither of them had thought to check highway conditions.

(In her defense, she was a little preoccupied by the thought of spending six hours in a car with Jon to worry about minor things like snowstorms.)

“I usually sleep on the left side,” she says, because Jon seems to be rooted to the spot.

That seems to unfreeze him. “Sansa,” he clears his throat, “we don’t have to—”

“And how do you propose we do it then?”

“We can request another room.”

“Sorry, did you miss the clerk saying that this is literally the last room left?”

“I’ll take the floor—“

“Do you know how disgusting that carpet probably is?”

“I don’t care.”

“Well, I do,” Sansa snaps. “We’re both adults, we’ll share.” She moves towards the double bed—although its size just _barely_ warrants the term—and tosses her purse on the left side table.

Jon still hasn’t moved. “Sansa…”

“I’m tired, Jon, let's just go to sleep. It's fine.”

“I just don’t want you to be uncomfortable.”

“What?”

She turns to face him. He’s staring at the floor.

“Just…after Joffrey,” he says, and she can see his fists clench for a second. “And Baelish, and Ramsay—you shouldn’t have to share a bed, or be touched, or—or anything with someone you don’t want to.”

Sansa moves towards him, tugs at his hand. His eyes dart up to hers, and she feels her heart speed up at their softness. “I’m not uncomfortable,” she tells him, and it’s true, in the sense that he means—she might have an inconvenient crush on him, she might be embarrassed that he basically ran away after what was probably the hottest makeup session of her life, but she’s always comfortable with Jon. She never feels objectified or used or patronized around him, the way she often does with guys. “You’re not Joffrey or Baelish or Ramsay.”

“I’m just as bad, though,” Jon says, his gaze dropping again. He runs a thumb over her knuckles—she doesn’t even think he knows he’s doing it, but she shivers at the movement. “I took advantage of you while you were drunk.”

“Oh my god,” Sansa says, wrenching her hand away from his. He reaches for it again, and she fights down the small surge of giddiness at the sight. “Is that what you think happened?”

“I mean, I was drunk too, but that’s no excuse, I know better—”

“And you think I don’t?” she demands. “After Ramsay, I stopped getting drunk at parties.”

“So you mean you were—sober? When we kissed—”

“I had, like, one beer when you came up to me and told me my eyes were so blue that you thought you could drown in them.”

He turns red immediately.

“Obviously,” she continues, “ _you_ were the drunk one in this scenario. One could argue I was taking advantage of _you_ , not the other way around.”

He groans. “How was I supposed to—you were all flushed and giggly, like you always get at Christmas when Arya spikes the eggnog.”

“Because I was flirting with you, you idiot.”

Jon’s answering smile somehow looks like he’s been struck in the head and like his wildest dreams are coming true all at once. Sansa’s pretty sure she has the exact same expression on her face.

He takes her hand again, still tentative. “I just thought—”

“Well, you thought wrong,” Sansa says, and loops her arms around his neck to pull him closer. “So what are you gonna do about it?”


	8. nocturne

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Written for Day 6 of the Jonsa Spring Challenge on Tumblr.
> 
> Song prompt: Chopin - Nocturne Op. 9, No. 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> short and rushed, but I wanted to at least post something after missing Days 3-5 (oops). plus Chopin is my fav so I really couldn't resist!
> 
> original Tumblr post [here](https://thesleepysubwaytrain.tumblr.com/post/172661471861/jonsa-spring-challenge-day-6-ao3).

Sansa tries to sleep, she really does, but it’s three hours of tossing and turning before she gives it up as a lost cause. It’s the silence of her borrowed room, she thinks, thick and heavy and almost oppressive. Before, she would have had Lady beside her, would have been able to rest her hand on her warm back and feel the rise and fall of her breathing—but that was before.

She slips out of her room and downstairs, out to the back porch where she finds Jon, as she has almost every night for the past few weeks she’s been hiding out at Robb’s.

He hasn’t slept properly since the fire, he told her the first night she wandered outside. _I see flames dancing behind my eyelids when I try_.

It was an oddly poetic thing to say for a boy Sansa had to coach on how to talk to girls back in high school, but she was just grateful he said anything at all, and moved over on the swing set to make room for her.

He does the same thing now, and she hops onto the seat, tucking her legs under her. Jon doesn’t say anything, doesn’t even look at her, just waits as she stares up at the sky and inhales and exhales, until the ringing silence in her head and her hammering heartbeat fades into the gentle sway of the swing and the rustling of the trees and the faint sound of Jon’s breathing.

Only a few months ago, at 2AM on a Saturday night Sansa would have been out with Marg or Joff at a club downtown, would have balked at the idea of sitting still with her brother’s broody best friend at a little house on the outskirts of the city.

But it’s a different kind of stillness, out here with Jon. She never feels restless, or anxious; instead, as she turns to look at his profile under the dim gleam of the porch light, it feels like she’s breathing properly for the first time all day.

She says, as she has every night, as she used to when she was a kid who loved nothing more than fairy tales: “Tell me a story.”

And Jon does. Sometimes it’s about her brother and some of their high school antics that Robb kept hidden from their parents. Sometimes it’s about one of the weekend hikes he goes out on with his friends at the station. Once, it was about Ygritte.

Tonight, it’s about his first time babysitting his best friend Sam’s son. He moves his hands a little as he talks, but it’s almost graceful, calm like the burr of his voice even as he rants about the complicated production of changing a diaper.

As she listens Sansa feels something in her chest unfurling, nestled against Jon’s side, close enough to feel his warmth, to feel the gentle rise and fall of his breathing. It feels entirely natural to rest her head on his shoulder, to feel him shift to let her relax against him, to close her eyes and let the quiet hush of his voice wash over her.

*

Robb finds them a few hours later, curled up asleep together on the swing set, and only goes back inside to grab a blanket to throw over them before heading out on his morning run.


End file.
